The “Four Gift” Rule for Marketers

Parenting and marketing have much more in common than first meets the eye. One example includes the 4 Gift rule – a concept that many parents apply when buying gifts for their children. Curious how you can apply the 4 Gift rule to your business? Read our article to find out more.

What is the 4 Gift Rule?

The 4 gift rule is used by parents to limit the number of gifts that they buy for their children. Specifically, it limits them to 4 categories – something their children want, need, wear and read. By doing so, you would be conditioning your child to not become overly greedy.

Applying the 4 Gift Rule to Marketing

When it comes to marketing, the 4 gift rule can be applied in a number of ways. Most notably, it can help inform your website’s design to capture your audience’s attention.

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A Want

Children often request for a particular gift that they fancy. Often times, this gift is the star of the 4, as your child gets to choose it. Typically, parents would get their child to provide them with a few options. From there, the you would get to surprise your child with a chosen gift. Part of the fun in this gift stems from the surprise and should not be underestimated.

Applying this concept to web design, we advocate that you have an enticing feature on your website for users. Commonly, this involves personality quizzes, mini games, fascinating stories or an application gives information based on what your user keys in.

The aforementioned features help to engage visitors and moves them further down your conversion funnel. More importantly, it sub-consciously aligns their wants and beliefs with your brand. This is a subtle but powerful marketing tactic as visitors begin to “want” to agree with your brand.

One Box’s website features an interactive carton box creator. Users can key in the length, width and depth of their desired box, and the application will return a proportionally shaped box. Furthermore, a price calculator helps to determine the cost of ordering 1 unit.

A Need

The next gift is an item that the parents deem useful for their child. An example of this could be a bicycle when parents wish to teach their child to be more adventurous. This gift may not always excite your child, but it gives them something valuable that they did not know they needed.

Giving your audience what they need and not just what they want should be applied to your marketing efforts. Often, visitors will enter your website with the intention to find a particular piece of information. While it is important to present this bit of information to them, you should also provide a bonus.

The bonus mentioned here refers to a tip or insight that can help your visitor be successful. The key here like the first gift, involves surprise. Ultimately, you need to surprise your visitor with a tip that they were not expecting and did not know beforehand.

Voyar’s website informs visitors about the differences between walkers and gait trainers. This arms their audience with strong knowledge about mobility solutions and thus allowing them to make a good purchase decision.

To Wear

Everyone dresses according to their desired image or to communicate a particular message. As such, parents often help their children to buy new clothes to help their child accomplish this piece of communication.

Websites are easily one of the top branding tools of a company. In fact, studies have shown that 75% of consumers make judgements of your brand’s credibility based on your website’s design. As such, in order to communicate your brand’s messages, you will need to employ effective web design.

For example, if your brand sells kids apparel and wishes to reach out to mothers, we would suggest:

• Using pastel colours that are easy on the eye
• Including human elements and emotion on the main sections of the website
• Using strong storytelling elements to guide users

Shenton Recovery effectively applies colour theory to their website. Red communicates danger across to visitors and thus is used for main headlines. Meanwhile, green is used for call-to-actions, intuitively telling visitors that Shenton Recovery’s services will help resolve their car’s issues.

To Read

Finally, parents naturally want their kid to be well read and knowledgeable. As such, books remain in demand amongst parents. Furthermore, books help to improve a kid’s imagination while expanding their vocabulary.

Putting yourself into the shoes of a parent, you should naturally want to educate and value-add to your website’s visitors. As such, your website should be a resource bank for your visitors. This has 2 other benefits:

• Attracting news users by providing precise answers to their search queries
• Retaining existing visitors who come back for more information

Moonflower’s website does more than just selling clothes, it gives visitors ideas on how they can mix and match apparel. This keeps their existing audience coming back for more ideas while attracting new audiences who are looking for specific themed style points.

Creating a Website that Gives Visitors the 4 Gifts

Let us do a brief recap, your website should ideally:

• Give users an interesting first interactive experience
• Fulfil a visitor’s need whether they know it or not
• Be designed to maximise brand appeal to the target audience
• Act as a resource centre for audiences

The 4 Gift Rule is one of many different principles that can be applied to your marketing or web design efforts. We recommend applying it and testing variations to find out the right balance between the 4 listed gifts. Interested to have the rule applied across all your digital platforms? Engage a digital marketing agency to find ideas on how you can funnel your audience towards a conversion with your business.

Choose Mediaplus Digital as your Web Design Partner

Mediaplus Digital is a Web design Singapore agency with more than 10 years experience.

Our web development team provides mobile responsive websites that are both intuitive and attractive to users. As a premier web design agency, we pride ourselves on providing sound advice to clients and effective project management.